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Post by metemeister on Dec 12, 2016 13:32:53 GMT -5
Before I make my statements, I would like to point out that Super Millionaire, in my opinion, was a great idea to attract more contestants and to entertain audience members with people gambling with more money than there ever was.
However, did any of you people see much "gambling" within the entire lifetime of Super Millionaire? Todd Kim is a great example. The two new lifelines which were implemented after the final barrier of $100,000 sparked some interest and I myself thought that this would be a great opportunity for people to easily make it to the increased jackpot of 10 million.
Unfortunately, that's not really the case. By the time most contestants have even made it to the 100k barrier, the three main lifelines (50:50, PaF and AtA) are all burned through to make it to that point. This already hints towards a unbeatable level of difficulty; the two new lifelines added were almost always used at the 500k question, and if by some chance they know the answer to the complex question, another one at the $1M question. The lifelines never made it further than that, and contestants walk away almost instantly once they're out of lifelines.
Robert Essig, the biggest winner of the temporary overhaul, walked with 1 million. Hence, it is just clear that the hunt for the winner of a decupled jackpot has failed, due to a few simple reasons:
The questions were just way too hard! Even the two extra lifelines barely helped...
What do you guys think?
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Post by Gagamillionaire on Dec 12, 2016 16:08:09 GMT -5
ABC hoped that just the premise of Super Millionaire would renew interest in the franchise. They never intended to give away $10,000,000 (hence the difficulty). And obviously, the contestants played right into their hands. After taxes, $100,000 is a new car and a nice trip, $500,000 is a house, and a million is just wealth beyond all expectations. Only an incredibly reckless person would gamble with that amount of money, no matter the pay-off. Especially with the kind of questions they asked on Super Millionaire, you'd be silly to act on a vague hunch.
The network worked against itself with that spin-off. Had it been a success, it would have been an expensive one. An unsuccessful doesn't produce money either, so it was lose-lose from the start.
I guess they only did Super Millionaire as a publicity stunt, with a potential revival of regular primetime Millionaire in mind. At least they tried...
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Post by metemeister on Dec 13, 2016 8:23:51 GMT -5
ABC hoped that just the premise of Super Millionaire would renew interest in the franchise. They never intended to give away $10,000,000 (hence the difficulty). And obviously, the contestants played right into their hands. After taxes, $100,000 is a new car and a nice trip, $500,000 is a house, and a million is just wealth beyond all expectations. Only an incredibly reckless person would gamble with that amount of money, no matter the pay-off. Especially with the kind of questions they asked on Super Millionaire, you'd be silly to act on a vague hunch. The network worked against itself with that spin-off. Had it been a success, it would have been an expensive one. An unsuccessful doesn't produce money either, so it was lose-lose from the start. I guess they only did Super Millionaire as a publicity stunt, with a potential revival of regular primetime Millionaire in mind. At least they tried... I'd agree. It's creation could be said to have been an excuse to bring primetime Millionaire back. I'm almost certain that most people would have preferred a resumption of the normal Millionaire instead of trying to bait more people with a jackpot which nobody could even think of reaching... |
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Post by kplewisvox on Dec 13, 2016 17:09:49 GMT -5
The issue with Super Millionaire is that numbers like $2,500,000, $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 are simply incomprehensible numbers. $1 million is already life-transforming money. What's the difference to the average contestant between $1 million and $2.5? $2.5 and $5?
Remember that when Millionaire was first in the development stage, they toyed with a $5 million top prize and a $50-some-odd million top prize. Then they came to the realization that "One Million Dollars" gave them the draw they wanted.
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Post by metemeister on Dec 14, 2016 14:00:21 GMT -5
I agree entirely. Super Millionaire was just too much of a bloat of a jackpot which was already life-transforming, as you said. There really was no point; it seems to have just been an attempt at trying to revive Millionaire at the time...
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Peachfanclub
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Post by Peachfanclub on Mar 17, 2017 15:31:52 GMT -5
Super Millionaire really didn't need to be successful. ABC was never going to make it into a series, and the syndicated version was already more or less thriving (of course at the expense of other syndicated game shows).
One thing that leads me to believe it was successful is that it was renewed for a second series. Notwithstanding the potential argument that this was just so Scott Hoff could finish his run, I really think interest in Millionaire as a whole spiked after the original special. I for one remember tuning in to watch the very first episode as a six year old and getting all excited when Todd Kim won the half million and hoping he could turn that into $1 million (before I understood that this was Super Millionaire, lol). It was nothing short of a good time, even if I couldn't answer any of the questions.
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Post by metemeister on Mar 18, 2017 12:35:30 GMT -5
I guess you have a point.
It's just that it felt... gimmick-y.
NOBODY would just give away a top jackpot like that. The questions must be post-PHD or very obscure and specific, such as "What is the exact optimum pH of the enzyme trypsin?", where you'd know an approximation, but never the exact answer.
Yes - it added another element of excitement and tension, as you said. Yes - it was successful for the two series it was on broadcast.
But it wasn't really Super Millionaire, because nobody made it to the "Super" prize. May as well make it just "Millionaire" and hope for the best. Heck, America has had a millionaire drought for the past 8 (?) years!
I do get your point though. It really added some new ideas to the game which made everyone interested in it again all of a sudden. But hear me out.
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Peachfanclub
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Post by Peachfanclub on Mar 22, 2017 18:49:59 GMT -5
Cash grab or not, I really don't think they'd ever use such an obscure question, even at the $10 million level, let alone have the four choices be ridiculously similar to each other, such as, "On what date did Minnesota become a U.S. state?" with the four possible answers as follows:
A: May 5, 1858
B: May 7, 1858
C: May 9, 1858
D: May 11, 1858
The only reason I would ever think to pull this off is to rat out a cheating contestant in an RPG-type situation.
The questions the show ended up using, I've said this before, many of them actually appear in grade school textbooks today. I think in retrospect that it was a safe bet to go that route, since Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader presumably hadn't been conceived yet.
I would say that the only thing "super" about Super Millionaire is that it produced almost as many $500k and $1m winners in twelve one-hour episodes than the syndicated version has made in its entire 14-year, 2000+ episode run. Even if the producers had no plans anytime soon to give out $5m, even $2.5m prizes, at least they made one $1m winner, which for me is the bare minimum to ask for with all those millions at stake.
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) I guess the next on will be Poland then...
